It could be said that Stephen Crowell and his dad, Steve Crowell, have a lot in common, as the younger drives a junior dragster and is the 2013 Intermediate Junior Dragster champion and the elder drove a ’72 Chevelle and was the ’93 Pro champion.

But Stephen, a sixth-grader at Keystone Middle School in LaGrange, Ohio, made it to several final rounds and won a race in 2013 while also guiding his brother, Michael Crowell, in the Novice Junior Dragster class. Both will help their younger brother, Tyler Crowell, when he enters the junior dragster ranks.

Stephen — who tends to be rather quiet in the staging lanes while he focuses — admits that a handful of early-round exits at a couple races in a row were of great concern to him because of how dramatically it impacted where he was in the points standings, but he made an even stronger commitment to his race program, hit the full-sized practice tree at home and gave it everything he had behind the wheel.

When he’s not making laps on the track, he’s making laps on the basketball court and on the baseball field at his school, and while he’s as skilled there as he is in his junior dragster, he doesn’t mince words when he says the track is where he’d rather be.

On the starting line with him, his dad and brothers every race day is his mom — and biggest fan — Joely Crowell.